Don Gonyea

Although Don Gonyea is a NPR National Political Correspondent based in Washington, D.C., he spends much of his time traveling throughout the United States covering campaigns, elections, and the political climate throughout the country. His reports can be heard on all NPR programs and at NPR.org.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Gonyea chronicled the controversial election and the ensuing legal recount battles in the courts. At the same time George W. Bush moved into the White House in 2001, Gonyea started as NPR's White House Correspondent. He was at the White House on the morning of September 11, 2001, providing live reports following the evacuation of the building.

As White House correspondent, Gonyea covered the Bush administration's prosecution of wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq and during the 2004 campaign he traveled with President Bush and Democratic nominee John Kerry. In November 2006, Gonyea co-anchored NPR's coverage of historic elections when Democrats captured control of both houses of the US Congress. In 2008, Gonyea was the lead reporter covering the entire Obama presidential campaign for NPR, from the Iowa caucuses to victory night in Chicago. He was also there when candidate Obama visited the Middle East and Europe. He continued covering the White House and President Barack Obama until spring 2010, when he moved into his current position.

Gonyea has filed stories from around the globe, including Moscow, Beijing, London, Islamabad, Doha, Budapest, Seoul, San Salvador, and Hanoi. He attended President Bush's first ever meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin in Slovenia in 2001, and subsequent, at times testy meetings between the two leaders in St. Petersburg, Shanghai and Bratislava. He also covered Mr.Obama's first trip overseas as president.

In 1986, Gonyea got his start at NPR reporting from Detroit on labor unions and the automobile industry. He spent countless hours on picket lines and in union halls covering strikes, including numerous lengthy work stoppages at GM in the late 1990s. Gonyea also reported on the development of alternative fuel and hybrid-powered automobiles, Dr. Jack Kevorkian's assisted-suicide crusade, and the 1999 closing of Detroit's classic Tiger Stadium — the ballpark of his youth.

Over the years Gonyea has contributed to PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, the BBC, CBC, AP Radio, and the Columbia Journalism Review. He periodically teaches college journalism courses.

Gonyea has won numerous national and state awards for his reporting. He was part of the team that earned NPR a 2000 George Foster Peabody Award for the All Things Considered series "Lost & Found Sound."

A native of Monroe, Michigan, Gonyea is an honors graduate of Michigan State University.

Former GOP presidential hopeful Linsdey Graham has announced his endorsement of Jeb Bush for president.

Graham's presidential campaign went nowhere, but as a senator from the early voting state of South Carolina he hopes to still have some clout.

Graham praised Bush's temperament Friday morning, following Thursday night's GOP debate. "He hasn't tried to get ahead in a contested primary by embracing demagoguery ... he's not running to be commander-in-chief by running people down," he said.

Here's a candidate for understatement of the year: The current presidential race has not exactly followed the script that the pundits, journalists and even that know-it-all news junkie at your book club or local diner predicted. You might say it was the year that conventional wisdom got humbled ... or Trumped.

The first, big moment of the 2016 race came just over a year ago, in the form of a tweet from the handle @JebBush:

This story is part of NPR's series Journey Home. We're going to the places presidential candidates call home and finding out what those places tell us about how they see the world.

Few presidential candidates go around invoking Richard Nixon. But that's exactly what GOP hopeful John Kasich does. It all goes back to a complaint Kasich had about his dorm room and a meeting with a university president 45 years ago.

The Republican presidential hopefuls debate in Las Vegas Tuesday night will be the first since the terrorist attacks in Paris and in San Bernardino, Calif. In recent weeks, ISIS and how to keep Americans safe have dominated the campaign and shot to the top of Americans' concerns.

It is hard to overstate the importance of New Hampshire for the presidential hopes of Jeb Bush.

He entered the year as the clear frontrunner. Now, after months of unfocused answers in interviews, unimpressive performances in the three GOP debates, and a general lack of enthusiasm on the campaign trail, he's in the middle of the pack in polls and stunned to be looking up at the likes of Donald Trump and Ben Carson.

Ben Carson and Donald Trump have very different personalities — one is as low-key as the other is over-the-top bombastic. They currently lead the rest of the field in the GOP presidential race and, unlike many political newcomers, each is building an organized ground game in Iowa to make sure his supporters actually turn out for the Feb. 1 caucuses.

At a recent Trump rally at a Sioux City high school, loudspeakers blasted an unofficial head-banging campaign anthem by Twisted Sister, to pump up the crowd for the candidate who wouldn't speak for another hour.

One candidate came out of Wednesday night's Republican presidential debate with a lot of questions to answer — Jeb Bush.

Supporters were disappointed by his performance and inability to stand out at a critical time for his campaign. As Bush struggles, his chances may come down to the early primary state of New Hampshire.

Bush had a big moment preplanned in that Colorado debate. It was aimed at Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., for missing so many votes in the Senate while campaigning.

There's nothing new about a big Donald Trump rally in Iowa. But what was different Tuesday was that it was Trump's first Iowa event in more than three months when he wasn't sitting atop the polls in the state.

All of the surveys of Iowa voters in the past week have put Dr. Ben Carson in the top spot. And Trump seemed perplexed by the turn of events — and let his audience know it.

As Democrats gain from the nation's growing diversity — attracting solid majorities among Hispanic and African American voters — Republicans are gaining among white, working-class voters, a group that was once a Democratic stronghold.

Nowhere is this clearer than in West Virginia, where the president touched down this week to talk about drug addiction.

The nation's largest public-employee union is backing Hillary Clinton for president. The board of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees voted to endorse the former senator and secretary of State on Friday.

"AFSCME members want a candidate who is committed to fixing our out-of-balance economy and raising incomes for hardworking people, who are still struggling to make ends meet," said AFSCME president Lee Saunders in a statement.